Wireless transceivers are used in a wide variety of wireless systems. A wireless transceiver may typically include a wireless receiver for receiving and demodulating signals, and a transmitter for modulating signals for transmission. Wireless transceivers and other communications circuits often include a local oscillator (LO) generator to generate an LO signal. Such an LO signal may be used with a mixer, for example, in a receiver portion of a transceiver to down-convert a received radio frequency (RF) signal to an intermediate frequency (IF). An LO generator may also be used by a transmitter portion of a transceiver (in combination with an RF power amplifier) to transmit a phase modulated (and/or amplitude modulated) RF signal. Of course, an LO generator may be used in other circuits as well. For various reasons (e.g., signal quality requirements of wireless communication protocols, such as phase noise requirements) certain components of LO generators are conventionally implemented using inductively loaded circuits. However, for transceivers implemented on integrated circuits, the inductors used to provide the loads for such circuits consume a considerable amount of circuit area (e.g., die area), which increases product cost.
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art may become apparent to those of skill in the art upon a reading of the specification and a study of the drawings.